Woah, walled-garden company doesn't have a convenient way for you to exit?
>NoteStore.sqlite
There’s ways to automate note exporting with AppleScript, too. The Notes app surfaces notes content in both plain text and HTML forms. Here’s an AppleScript and Automator workflow I found that does exactly that: https://github.com/johansan/AppleNotesExport
Not that export couldn’t be better, but post author clearly didn’t go far in researching any of this. All assumption no problem solving.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/1k07yqj/sharp_edges/
Over-the-top machismo from a Karen crying about an incident ten years ago when his computer was too pointy and now he’ll never shop here again and he’ll make sure none of his friends shop here, either.
I'm no engineer, but I know I need to back up my Mac, just like every other PC. I run Arq and back it up to cloud storage, and I also have a sync program set up to back up my most critical files to secondary locations.
Yes, Notes is proprietary. But why is that a surprise? It basically says it on the tin. That's exactly why I have never used it. I used Notational Velocity, nvAlt, some others, and ultimately Obsidian. All my notes are text files that have followed me for 1.5 decades, through multiple Macs.
As he tells it, Apple support put in the effort to figure out how to restore his Apple notes on his old computer, including walking him through an OS upgrade to do it. And that's supposed to be a bad thing? It sounds like a pretty amazing support experience, honestly.
He says he can't export Notes individually. I don't use Notes at all. But I popped open Apple's Script Editor just now, pulled up the Notes dictionary, and I see AppleScript commands for opening notes and for saving them in particular formats. You can also read the "HTML content of each note." It should be pretty simple to set something up to pull each note and save them in plain text format as he originally thought. I bet this is better than most notetaking apps with proprietary formats.
This whole article basically boils down to "I didn't back up my stuff, Apple bent over backwards to help me recover it, but I don't like the Notes PDF export format or the sharp edges on the hardware so I think Macs suck."
- Apple ships with the OS a notes app that is proprietary and not open enough for you;
- You do prefer to save your notes in different formats than notes does because of portability;
- The OS app lacks basic functionality to export notes;
- You need to write code to actually export your damn notes.
How is this not a disappointing UX experience for a 3 trillion company that is celebrated for its UX escapes me.
I'm not expecting Apple to write a notes app that tops Obsidian, a photo management app that beats Lightroom, or a news reader that beats NetNewsWire, etc etc.
The point about writing code to export from Notes was to show that, if a person nonetheless chooses for whatever reason to use the free note taking app they ship with the OS, then they can still export things.
It's not a ding against Apple, if you're running a select shop people expect a curated experience, but you can't look at it the same way as a home center or hardware shop.
My take after having been in the Apple ecosystem for a while: it's perfect if you can throw money at any issues.
The author's issue with notes not exporting goes away if he had multiple Mac's and never cared to move away from the walled garden.
People pissed about gaming on the mac are IMHO in the same boat, the real answer is usually "buy a console or gaming PC", or in other words "throw money at it".
People wanting cellular on the mac solved the issue with money (either an iPhone or portable WiFi). People wanting the iPad to do more solved it with money (permanent server connection and/or Mac screen sharing).
For people who don't have money to throw around, that ecosystem will just be pain at all turns IMHO. (It might be well worth it, but you need to be willing to commit that money in the first place)
But I find the competitors in shambles. The hardware for virtually all PC laptops is pretty horrible. Software and UX have their own issues etc.
What keeps me on the Mac is Apple dedication to accessible technologies and having a *nix base, and for the most part they've been pretty consistent with that offering.
That's the really sad part. Apple only has to be better than Windows :)
Idk it seems to me like I just read something written by someone who considers himself a computer expert because he built a computer, but doesn't actually know anything.
- the early butterfly keyboards were fragile, difficult to type with, and stuff got stuck in them
- USB-C only transition made me have to use adapters everywhere
- the touch bar (and software escape key) was atrocious
- the glass screens were too thin and could break easily
They’ve fixed most of those issues since, but man, for a few years they were awful machines.
... and the last butterfly keyboards. I bought one after they added extra insulation under the keys (or whatever they pretended to do) and it broke in a couple months just like the early ones.
"As such, they are not intended to encounter circumstances that don’t track to the lifestyle of the average Apple employee."
This one is right. For the wrong reasons.
He didn’t enable iCloud backups properly and apparently Notes does not have a way to bulk export.
How many people are moving their computers like this?
I have a Dell Laptop and Monitor on my desk now. I move the laptop, never the monitor. It has lots of dust on it to prove it.
Not sure of the Author’s point
